1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fabrication system of a wiring harness, and more particularly, it relates to a wiring harness fabricating system which can be pliably adjustable to the change in a design of the wiring harness and the multi-item mixed flow production.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A wiring harness is an electric wiring system organized by a great number of wires, terminals, connectors, etc., and is incorporated in an automobile, copying machine, or the like.
A fabrication process of such wiring harness includes various steps of measuring and cutting wires, laying out wires, stripping insulative sheaths at the ends of wires, crimping terminals and bared wire end together for contacting, inserting a terminal to a connector receptacle, etc. Hence, it requires a great deal of labor and time to fabricate the wiring harness, and it has been highly desired to automate the fabrication process of the wiring harness.
An exemplary well-known automated fabricating machine of a wiring harness is disclosed in Japanese Examined Patent Publication Nos. 46489/1985, 54245/1989, 42085/1989, 15994/1990, 66790/1991, or the like. The automated fabricating machine as described in any of the above official gazettes is an assembly for conducting a specified step or several steps of fabricating a wiring harness, which is inflexible or fixed in processing capacity at each step.
Also disclosed is another prior art automated wiring harness fabricating machine in which several process steps can be conducted on an assembly line (e.g., see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 313870/1989). This type of automated wiring harness fabricating machine is an assembly unit in which several mechanism for fabrication steps and a conveyor mechanism of a specified length for conveying a wire lay-out board are incorporated cooperatively.
A wiring harness is restyled in relatively short cycles. Automobiles are, for example, changed minutely every other year and are usually restyled every four years. In such a change, main parts or bodies of the automobiles are changed, or electrical equipment for the automobiles are increased or decreased in number, or changed. With any increase, decrease or change in such electrical equipment as well as the change in the automobile main parts or bodies, the wiring harness used for the circuit wiring of such electrical equipment is naturally changed in design. Changing of a design of the wiring harness causes a complete change in a circuit configuration or a shape of a products.
Thus, the automated wiring harness fabricating machine must be that which is pliably adjustable to the change of the design of the wiring harness.
As mentioned above, however, the prior art automated wiring harness fabricating machine is inflexible in processing capacity at each process step and/or is an assembly unit where the conveyor mechanism of a certain length is cooperatively incorporated, and therefore, the wiring harness fabricated by the prior art apparatus is restrictive in sort and feature. Accordingly, there is a disadvantage that an automated apparatus which fabricates a wiring harness in a predetermined mode is useless to fabricate a wiring harness of a different design. Such a prior art automated apparatus cannot be pliably adjusted to the change of the design of wiring harnesses, and hence, it is necessary to improve the automated apparatus for fabricating such a new-design wiring harness. This brings about a problem, for example, that the operative time of the costly automated apparatus is too short to recover its manufacturing cost.
The multi-item mixed flow production is preferable to other manners, allowing for the practical fabrication procedure of a wiring harness; that is, a fabrication procedure is conducted for each of the several temporary binding units, and thereafter, several of the temporary binding units are united together to produce a finished product of the wiring harness.
For that purpose, various kinds of temporary binding units are first to be fabricated. In view of the enhancement of production efficiency, the various temporary binding units are preferably fabricated on parallel flows. With such a mode that after fabricating a mass of temporary binding units of the same type, a mass of them of another type are fabricated, a finishing stage of uniting the temporary binding units of all required kinds cannot be performed till the required temporary binding units are prepared for the finishing stage. This is because such a fabrication mode is of low production efficiency. In addition to that, a storage lot must be prepared for keeping the produced temporary binding units. Thus, the multi-item mixed flow production is desirable.
However, the prior art automated apparatus cannot fabricate the temporary binding units of different kinds on a mixed flow although it can fabricate the temporary binding units of the same kind which are all identical in the predetermined numbers of circuits and connectors. In other words, The prior art automated apparatus has a disadvantage that it is not suitable for the multi-item mixed flow production.
The present invention is devised to overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages.